


For the Love of a Mother

by Zippit



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: Alternate Canon, Gen, Role Reversal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-04
Updated: 2011-10-04
Packaged: 2017-10-24 07:37:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 769
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/260743
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zippit/pseuds/Zippit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Family shapes who you are and who you become but it's what you do that defines you.</p>
            </blockquote>





	For the Love of a Mother

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to [](http://archiveofourown.org/users/catw00man/profile)[](http://archiveofourown.org/users/catw00man)**Catw00man** for the beta. All other errors are mine.
> 
> Written for prompt #133 - Study over at [fma_fic_contest](http://fma-fic-contest.livejournal.com).
> 
>   
> 

The legacy left to Riza by her mother is etched into her back. The burden of it was scorched into her soul on the sands of Ishval. The scars on her back where her own doing. A mirror in front of her, another behind her, and a pinpoint accuracy developed from the desperation never to let the secrets of flame alchemy fall into another’s hands.

Her mother’s alchemic research drove her father long after she’d died. Riza thinks it drove him mad. It certainly drove any compassion from him. The only emotion left to him was ambition and the desire to finish the work he and his wife started so long ago. Her hazy memories of a smiling woman with amber eyes and a laughing man with the image of her father feel like children’s tales. The pictures she scrounged from the attic while her father labored away on flame and fire proved her memories to be true. Sometimes she wonders what her life would be like if her mother still lived.

Also tucked away in the attic had been the remnants of her crib and the mobile of alchemic symbols. The baby book with her name lovingly written under a picture of her only hours old was filled with the dates and events from the moment of her first breath until the weeks before her mother’s passing. Her first word had been “circle” as she’d sat beside her father at the table watching him draw one transmutation circle after the other her mother’s neat script notes under the entry. Her next had been “Mama.”

Her first transmutation had been at the age of four after several weeks of her mother’s teaching. She learned to draw the basic alchemy circle with her mother’s hand wrapped around hers. The principles of alchemy explained through the transformation of water into the ice cubes Riza loved in the summer months. She remembers those warm hands pressing hers to the edge of that first circle and the tingle of power as it flowed from their combined touch. Unwilling to bother her mother, busy with a special dinner, Riza had chalked a rough edged circle into the middle of the living room floor. The neat lettering underneath the photo of a misshapen mound of ice told the rest of the story.

Her history presses in upon her as she sits in Pinako Rockbell’s home, staring down this woman that sees Edward and Alphonse like her own. She wonders if Edward and Alphonse have baby books tucked away in some forgotten drawer but that’s not the matter at hand. These boys no longer have the luxury of growing up in a rural eastern city. “Ms. Rockbell, I understand your concern, but what the boys have done is no small matter.”

“And you want to haul them away to the military, at their age!” Pinako Rockbell clenches her teeth around the end of her pipe and glares across the table at Riza. When she gets back to East City, she’s going to have a stern word with Mustang. His reports of a skilled alchemist living in Resembool had proven to be true but the matter of his age had been grossly exaggerated. His “favor” would only serve to bring her trouble.

“I’m only offering them the chance to get their bodies back. With as talented as Edward clearly is, access to the otherwise restricted materials could, given time, provide them with a way to restore themselves.” She looks at the hunched boy in the wheelchair and says, “I’m not forcing you. You have choices. What you do with them is your decision." She pushes from her seat and nods at Ms. Rockbell and walks to the door. “Havoc, we’re leaving.”

As the clip clop of the horses’ hooves take them further away from the house, Havoc lights up a cigarette beside her and blows the smoke out into the wind. “Will they be coming?”

She looks back at the three figures standing at the top of the hill. “Determination like that doesn’t just go away. I think we’ll see them again.”

Havoc looks disbelieving but she recognizes the fire in Edward. She saw it in her own father, her mother, and Mustang with his idealistic dreams. There is little that will stop someone set on a task. But more than that, she recognizes the loss bound up in the determination. They tried to bring back their mother. She wears the scars she does because of her own mother. Many things have been done in love and grief. This is only another. She will see them again.


End file.
